Chapter Text
The command center was less a room and more a construction site. The grand dome of the Iacon Hall of Records was still half-missing, exposing the steel girders to the pale light of the Cybertronian sun. Sparks rained down from the ceiling where Vehicon troopers were welding support beams. The air smelled of ozone and fresh metal. The Autobots had been hard at work to fix things in their new base, but it was a slow process. Many of the systems hadn’t been active for millenia.
At the center table Ultra Magnus stood with a datapad in hand.
“Attention,” Ultra Magnus barked, his voice cutting through the noise of the welding overhead. “We are behind schedule on the reconstruction of Sector Seven. I need status updates and assignments.”
He turned to the black and yellow scout. “Bumblebee, I need you to lead the excavation team at the Helix Gardens. The rubble there is unstable, and we need someone with command experience to ensure the structural integrity holds.”
Bumblebee nodded, his voice no longer a cacophony of beeps and radio samples, but clear and confident with the voice of a young leader. “You got it, Commander. I’ll make sure the team shores up the foundations before we start digging. No collapses on my watch.”
“Good,” Magnus noted something on his pad. He turned to the Wrecker leaning casually against a crate. “Wheeljack, you’re on perimeter duty. We’re detecting energy spikes near the Sea of Rust.”
“You want me to babysit sensors?” Wheeljack scoffed, crossing his arms. “I thought we were rebuilding, not birdwatching.”
“We are securing our home, soldier,” Magnus replied, tone flat.
“Commander Magnus,” Ratchet interrupted, stepping forward from a console. He looked exhausted, wiping grease from his faceplate. “We have a more pressing logistics issue. The infirmary is critically low on medical-grade energon. We can’t synthesize the complex strains yet, our refineries aren’t calibrated.”
Ratchet tapped the holomap, highlighting a small, grey sphere orbiting the planet. “However, long-range scans have picked up an intact stockpile in an old storage depot on Moonbase One.”
“Moon trip?” Wheeljack perked up, spinning a calibrator in his hand. “I’ll go. Sounds better than sensor duty. Just fire up the space bridge and I’ll be back in five clicks.”
“Absolutely not!” Ratchet snapped. “Do you have any idea how volatile medical energon is? If you put that through a space bridge vortex, the radiation will destabilize the molecular bonds! It will be useless sludge by the time it materializes.”
“So… we drive?” Wheeljack asked, bored again.
“We take a shuttle,” Ratchet corrected. “A low-orbit drop ship.”
Ultra Magnus looked around the room. “Wheeljack is needed on the perimeter. Bumblebee is commanding the excavation.” His optics landed on the cherry-red sports car buffing a smudge off his door panel in the corner. “Knock Out.”
Knock Out jumped, nearly dropping his buffer. “Hm? Were you speaking to me?”
“You are a medical officer,” Magnus stated. “You have the expertise to identify the correct energon variants and ensure their safe transport. You will take the shuttle to Moonbase One.”
“Excuse me?” Knock Out looked horrified. “The moon? Do you know what the atmospheric composition of that rock is? It is ninety percent abrasive silicate dust! It will scour my clear coat in minutes! I’ll look like a common matte-finish protoform!”
“Your vanity is not an operational constraint,” Magnus said dryly. “We need the energon.”
“Can’t Smokescreen go?” Knock Out whined, gesturing vaguely. “He likes dirt.”
“Smokescreen is currently patrolling the perimeter ion cannons,” Magnus said. “You are going.”
Knock Out slumped his shoulders, groaning audibly. “Fine. But I’ll need a full resurfacing when I get back.”
“Actually, Magnus,” Arcee stepped forward. She had been quiet until now, leaning against the far wall, her arms crossed. “I’ll go with him.”
Ultra Magnus paused. “Arcee? I had you slated for the archives.”
“I need to clear my head,” Arcee said smoothly, her face unreadable. “Besides, I’ve been having some calibration issues with my long-range targeting sensors. The magnetic interference in the city is too high to fix it. A trip to the moon would give me the clear signal I need to run diagnostics.”
She glanced at Knock Out, her eyes narrowing slightly. “And someone needs to make sure Knock Out actually loads the cargo instead of just complaining about the dust. Or trying to polish it off.”
Knock Out rolled his eyes. “Oh, joy. Company.”
“Very well,” Ultra Magnus nodded. “Permission granted. Take Shuttle 4. Launch is in one cycle.”
The cramped confines of the small Cybertronian drop-ship offered little room to move. Outside, the grey, cratered surface of the moon loomed larger, filling the viewport.
Arcee flicked a series of switches on the overhead console, her movements precise and practiced.
“Strap in,” she commanded, not looking back. “We’ll be landing in ten kliks.”
Knock Out fiddled nervously with his safety harness, trying to adjust it so it wouldn’t scuff his chest plate. These old shuttles had so many abrasive surfaces. He leaned forward, squinting at the glowing nav-computer. “Just out of curiosity, which sector are we aiming for, exactly? The moon is… quite large, after all.”
Arcee tapped the holographic map, highlighting a jagged region near the dark side terminator line. “Right there. Sector Four. The old Hecate Mining Outpost. Scans show the storage facility is just beneath the ridge.”
Knock Out stared at the red dot on the map. His internal fans whirred audibly as his processor connected the dots. Sector Four. The extraction point. Soundwave’s coordinates. Oh, scrap.
“You know,” Knock Out laughed, a high-pitched, brittle sound. “I don’t think the energon is there.”
Arcee frowned, checking a monitor. “We confirmed the signature before we left. It’s a massive stockpile.”
“Right, yes, the signature,” Knock Out waved a hand dismissively. “But you know how temperamental those long-range sensors can be. Solar flares, cosmic radiation… they get out of alignment constantly. We’re probably reading a… a cloud of ionic gas. Why don’t we turn around, go back to Iacon, and I can personally recalibrate the sensor array? It would take all day.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Arcee scoffed. “Ratchet calibrated the sensors this morning. They’re fine.”
“Well, even if they are,” Knock Out persisted as coolant starting to bead on his forehead. “I mean to say, that area is notoriously… unstable. Tectonically speaking. Seismic anomalies.”
Arcee spun her chair around to face him, eyebrows raised. “What are you talking about? It’s a moon, Knock Out. The core solidified eons ago. There haven’t been moonquakes here since the Golden Age.”
“Well, ‘quakes’ is perhaps too strong a word, but –”
“Knock Out,” Arcee’s voice dropped an octave. It was her ‘interrogation’ voice. “What is going on? You’re vibrating so hard you’re going to shake the ship apart. What do you know that I don’t?”
“What? Nothing!” Knock Out looked away, feigning interest in a blank wall panel. “It’s hard to say, really. We both know so much. Knowledge is vast! For example, do you know how to perform a T-Cog transplant on a turbofox? I’m sure you don’t, but I do. But I’m sure you could learn it, you are very capable, and–”
“Okay, stop,” Arcee cut him off, narrowing her optics. “Now I know you’re hiding something. You only compliment people when you’re guilty. Spill it. Is the depot trapped? Is it a bomb?”
Knock Out sighed, slumping in his seat. “Not… a bomb. Exactly.” He gestured vaguely at the moon filling the window. “There might be… a slight… biological hazard in that sector.”
“Define ‘hazard’,” Arcee said slowly.
“Do you remember the… unpleasantness… with the synthetic energon? And the dark energon?” Knock Out winced.
Arcee stared at him. “The Terrorcons. You said they were destroyed. You assured us, even. ‘You can trust me,’ you said.”
Knock Out was looking everywhere but at Arcee’s eyes. “Well… I was perhaps a bit optimistic. In the process of resolving that situation – at great danger to myself, I might add – Starscream and I may have accidentally… created a highly contagious vampire virus.”
Arcee stared at him. “You… what? Knock Out, are you telling me there are infected Cybertronians out here?”
“Most were dealt with!” Knock Out said quickly. “But… Airachnid… might have… sort of… ended up here. Infected. In this specific sector. With a hive of Insecticons.” He paused, shrinking under her glare. “Who are undead. And very hungry.”
Arcee sat in silence for a long moment. The ship hummed around them.
Knock Out watched her, expecting her to turn the ship around, or at least contact Ultra Magnus.
Instead, Arcee unbuckled her safety harness, stood up, and walked to the weapon storage locker at the back of the cockpit.
“Uh… Arcee?” Knock Out asked. “Did you hear the ‘vampire’ part? Or the ‘hive’ part? We should be retreating. Ideally, very, very far away. Behind heavy weapons.”
Arcee punched the code into the locker. The door hissed open, revealing a heavy ion blaster and a rack of grenades. She grabbed the blaster, the light from the barrel reflecting in her cold, blue optics.
“Airachnid is down there?” Arcee asked, her voice dangerously calm.
“Yes, but –”
“And she’s trapped?”
“Well, yes, but –”
Arcee racked the slide on the blaster with a metallic CLACK. She turned to Knock Out with a satisfied smile.
“Good,” she said. “Moon’s haunted.”
“What?” Knock Out sputtered.
“We’re going in, Knock Out,” she said, walking back to the pilot’s chair. “I’m not leaving until I mount her head on my dashboard.”